Dr. Aimee Duffy: Unveiling the Hidden Impacts of Sleep Deprivation
Founder & Medical Director, Carolina Integrative Medicine
#aimeeduffymd #sleep #healthtips
Are you getting enough sleep? As a society, we are just starting to scratch the surface of understanding sleep. Despite this fundamental lack of knowledge, we continue to deprive ourselves of sleep in all sorts of ways. We pull all-nighters for school or work, we stay up watching TV or browsing the internet, and we even bring our work home with us.
Watch now and listen to Dr. Duffy’s discussion about SLEEP!
Dr. Duffy utilizes the latest technology in an integrative manner through sophisticated testing and treatment strategies. Her goal is to develop a partnership with her patients empowering them to maximize their vitality and improve their quality of life. The team at Carolina Integrative Medicine is passionate about mentoring men and women who are willing to take the steps necessary to achieve optimal, life-long health.
Full Transcript
Introduction to Sleep Concerns 0:00
Hey everyone, Dr. Duffy here, I'm working from home today, my beautiful home office I have all set up. I just wanted to chat for a little bit about sleep, we're talking about asleep this week. And this is one of the top three to five concerns that we see in our patients that come to see us, that they're just not getting good sleep. When we talk a bit more detail about what does that mean for them, it's really important to establish different areas of sleep.
Types of Sleep Problems 0:28
So is it I'm having trouble falling asleep? I am exhausted. I can't wait to go to sleep and then you lay your head down and all of a sudden your brain is thinking about all the things you didn't do yesterday or today or all things that you need to do tomorrow and here goes our brain wheels turning, right? Or do you fall asleep great but then wake up throughout the night and have trouble fall back asleep or Are you sleep sleeping, but then you're just waking up too early? You prefer to have your seven or eight hours of sleep and maybe you are waking after five or six.
So that's really important. And then the other thing that we talk about is when are you waking? There's different areas if you are waking up throughout the night that are affected at different times of the nights.
What Time You Wake Up Matters 1:12
So around midnight to 2 a.m. is often a time where blood sugar issues happen. That might be important to think about if that's the time that you're waking what's happening before you go to sleep in terms of are you having a snack or did you eat dessert? Did you have a beverage? And that may be creating some blood-sugar abnormalities. And then if you're waking up between two and four, sometimes that can be a liver issue. That's the time of night when your liver is really active doing its job to detox and clean things up a little bit.
So if that's an issue, then we need to be working on some detox. And if your waking between four and six in the morning, that is more adrenal. And so that may be an issue for you. We need to be looking at your stress levels and your brain is waking up before your body's ready to wake up kind of thing. Those are some areas that we look at and have conversations about. And then if you're having trouble just falling asleep, then sometimes that needs to be some sleep behavior things like, are we having too much screen time
Sleep Hygiene and Relaxation Strategies 2:16
that's stimulating? Are you exercising too late? Can we do some things to help calm your brain down? Start early, turning the lights off around the house or making sure that you don't have a lot of screen-time right before you go to bed? Meditation, one of my favorite things recently is something called yoga nidra. And you can just look that up on YouTube and find a lot of yoga NIDRA videos. It's a meditative type thing, but it goes through this relaxation process really helps me when my brain is too busy thinking.
Those are some areas that you start looking at and see whether there's some room for improvement there. So if you're waking up a little bit during the night. When are you waking up and what are some things we can do there? Certainly there are physiologic things going on like we see hormonal imbalances or adrenal dysfunction that can affect sleep. We may want to be looking at hormone testing to see whether there's some changes there.
Hormonal Factors and Better Sleep 3:13
Are you having night sweats, hot flashes, things like that. So all kinds of ways that we talk about your sleep and help you to get a better night's sleep, we have so many patients that work with us that is a main concern for them but often It is something that is resolved. They're sleeping great, they're waking up feeling refreshed the next day. So there's definitely an area where we can improve without having to go to a medication, sleeping pill, that sort of thing. If you have questions about sleep, if that's a goal for you is to get better sleep then certainly reach out to us and see if we get you feeling a little bit better and sleeping better, and living your best life.
Have a great day!
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